Monday, May 25, 2015

Keep Writing Your Story

This is my last week of Sophomore year.
My last week of being a homeschooler. The four years of high school
do move just as quickly as everyone told me they would. "Sophomore"
has been who I am for the past year, but "homeschooler" has
been tagged to my identity for ten years now. It's honestly scary
changing that with my Junior year being the first at public school.
Of course, its not just the name itself, its the change that I've
spent years contemplating but always deemed "too scary" to
go through with. A courageous act in my own personal book; an account
of all the sentences written to lead to that book being filled so
that I now start a new one.

The first sentence probably read "Go
to Sea world", a glorious ink stain to be scripted on that scary
blank white page. "Learn to hold a conversation" takes up a
whole page in the middle, and took painstakingly long to meticulously
write. The book ends with "learn to tie a balloon", "get
rid of my security blanket (Long hair)", and "let
people know more about me" scrawled on the bottom of the back cover. I
didn't end up with a half filled notebook to be placed back on the
shelf for years, I scribbled down all the things that make me
uncomfortable and did them until I could take a thick black marker
and let it glide through those words without a second of hesitation
knowing "I did it and now this is part of my new comfort zone."

I did not let my little match box stay
a match box, it grew to a jewelry box, then a box the size of my bass
drum. Eventually it became a house big enough for me to let people walk
inside so I can share a piece of my guarded thoughts without fear of
the chandelier pulled down or fine jewelry collection stolen. If I
stop getting out of my comfort zone, I stop growing. If I stop
growing, I stop living. If I stop living... Well, I might as well be
dead and rest with the fact that my little match box never even
became big enough for a coffin. If I stop filling book after book
with things that make me uncomfortable then crossing them out like
the names of forgotten childhood crushes drawn on the inside of a bunk bed, I stop turning the pages. I stop starting new books to
expand the gorgeous library. I can not keep my bookmark in the middle
of Sophomore year and I will not keep it in Public School,
Crazy Rock Concert, Moving out. or Losing a Friend. I do
not determine whether my life is a trilogy, or fills a massive bookshelf. I
do determine how many pages are blank, and if I re-read all the old
ones or keeping writing when my hands cramp or I miss that story of
looking at the stars with my best guy friend.

I can not tell if these are the last
words I write in my book, I never know when my pen will run out of
ink. But if I have enough to victoriously close shut Sophomore
Year and start Summer 2015 I sure hope I can fill every
page of it with nights star gazing with the people I love most, every
kind word breathed out by friends brought closer, and drips of every
tie dye shirt I make with rock'n'roll music playing in the back
ground. I hope to cross off with that black sharpie "Rock
climbing" and "Meet new
people." May I, and may you; never stop growing, turning
the pages,

and never

ever

stop writing our stories.

( It's almost 1 AM and I'm writing Algebra 2 vocabulary words. There's probably a lot of grammar mistakes in this, but it's finals weeks and I want all of this out. )